**
Hugo rolled out of bed and almost onto the floor, but he managed to get his feet underneath him at the last moment. He scraped a t-shirt off the floor, sniffed it, then pulled it over his head, near-blindly stumbling over to his kitchenette for coffee.
He felt like shit and it was almost pleasant. Wait. Not the slow, roiling churn of his stomach or the dry, tart stickiness in his mouth, but the feeling he’d woken with. He retraced the dream, crystal clear in his mind, looking for what had created the most pleasant hangover in his life. It was a disjointed mess of a dream, as all dreams are (except for the explosion one he’d been having for several days now). But in the last frame of the dream he’d been in a field of forget-me-nots, each one so clearly and perfectly defined that he could have counted them to the horizon if he so desired, which he didn’t. But there were 3,141 of them. Each one was leaning in a warm breeze that blew and whistled a slow, solemn rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. As the wind wrapped around him, he could feel its fingers brush his skin, toss his white hair and whisper the simple lyrics in his ear, and somehow those words carried with them the promise that everything would be alright. And he’d believed it. Wanted to. The explosion was turning into a nightmare that nearly expanded across his entire dreamscape, making it difficult to sleep. Even getting piss drunk didn’t seem to help.
He opened the dishwasher, pulling out a mug he suspected was clean, examining the inside just in case. It seemed safe. He pulled out the old filter with the crusty damp grounds and replaced it with a fresh filter and coffee grounds, getting small specks of brown all over his yellowing counter.
He was going batshit. It was a logical conclusion, but for some reason not the one his brain was trying to reach. It reminded him of the car crash he’d seen (he’d been drunk) Steve’s grandfather’s death (he’d been drunk, and Steve had had to call off band practice for the funeral a few days later), the vivid recollection during (drunken) sex with a friend of a friend, of her in a hot tub filling with a dark, billowing cloud of blood. He’d locked himself in the bathroom after that. The next day Cherry had apologized for not warning him. Apparently the friend had had a miscarriage and was compensating by screwing anything that moved. His friends were still making fun of him for what the girl had described as ‘a sudden attack of the crazies, followed by a very hasty exit that almost occurred pantsless.’
Hugo took in a deep breath as the coffee brewed, the squirlly feeling in his stomach starting to settle. He stared absently at the coffeemaker.
He wanted to be batshit. It seemed like a better deal than being able to see the past and future. That was a superpower; A shitty superpower, but a superpower none-the-less. People did not have superpowers because people would abuse the crap out of them and would catch the attention of the media, either on purpose or on accident, eventually, and they’d already be known about. Unless this was some recent development, like some meteor had broken up in the atmosphere and sprinkled its superpower dust on a random assortment of people. Or maybe the only powers you could get where the shitty ones and they weren’t flashy enough to draw the attention of the media…or perhaps he should stop having the crazy thoughts and drink his shitty coffee.
The Sound of Wind Page 3
